Science in the Glorious Quran: Animal Behaviour
Since the early history of mankind, people have been gaining experience about animal behavior. This has enabled them to tame and train animals like cats, dogs, donkeys, birds, etc. However, the experience of someone with the animals’ behavior remains limited to a few animals, unless he is a scientist specialized in the science of animal behavior (Ethology). Scientists started to record their observations about animal behavior in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The modern discipline of Ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of Nikolaas Tinbergen and by Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, who were awarded jointly Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973.
Interestingly, the glorious Qur’an, revealed more than 14 centuries ago, addresses and draws our attention to the behavior of different types of insects, birds, fishes and mammals. Would an ordinary unlettered person like the Prophet Muhammad be knowledgeable about the behavior of these different animals unless he was inspired by God?
How could an unlettered man brought up in the Arabian Desert know about the behavior of different animals of different habitats?
Continue reading about the behavior of:
The Fly The Bees Communication of Ants
Locusts Spiders The Hoopoe
The intelligence of the crow The lion and the prey
Dogs body language Beaching of whales
Fishes at water surface
God ordains and guides